Watch: A super colony of 1.5 million penguins has been discovered in the Antartica

Hope for a dwindling species.

Despite global warming and melting ice-caps, it’s not all bad news from the Antarctica. Scientists have stumbled upon a huge colony of Adélie Penguins, except that “huge” doesn’t even begin to cover the size of their population.

After satellite imagery showed masses of penguin droppings on the Danger Islands, a group of scientists ventured out with their cameras and drones to discover a population of 1.5 million penguins. Yes, 1.5 million. These penguins have been living undiscovered on these islands since 2015.

Given their vast population in this region, scientists have described this as a “super colony”. Having deemed the penguin population to be on a decline, they are hopeful that after the discovery of these colonies, the overall numbers will be found to have increased substantially.